


Breakers

by Zigzagwanderer



Series: Tomorrow was our Golden Age. [13]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-15 03:16:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14150778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigzagwanderer/pseuds/Zigzagwanderer
Summary: Takes place after the end of 'Tell me you'll wait for me' and prior to the stories in 'Tomorrow was our golden age.' Apologies for being slow updating the end of TMYWFM. I am getting there.





	Breakers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fragile-teacup (Mrs_Gene_Hunt)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mrs_Gene_Hunt/gifts), [FhimeChan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FhimeChan/gifts).



> Just another big hug to all who read-you are truly the ink in my nib!

He runs. Fast. 

They flank him; he can hear them behind him, unswerving in their intent, so he runs true, yet with crooked cunning, and he runs _fast_. 

And he runs, regrettably, alone.

It was always going to come to this, Hannibal sees it now, even as his breathless comprehensions leap over recent, accumulating incidents. Even while he vaults over a fallen tree, a ditch, a stump. He runs, fast, true, hard, navigating through the refuge of their trees, evading and escaping, and he thinks; how could he have dreamed of peace? That is not the portion of monsters; he knows of no mythos, no saga in any tongue where the demons are permitted to live happily ever after. 

And Will has only been on Vakkrehejm, with Hannibal, for five days. 

Hannibal pushes the pity of it away, and runs in the flying footsteps of his own anger, chasing down his own disappointment and frustration. He doubles back to their little white house, through the lamenting mist, that carries the cries of all the archipelago in its cool, callous embrace, and he is wet with exertion, and his muscles and his emotions _tremble_. 

He has no choice but to return; there is something inside that he needs. 

The sitting room is quiet, where yesterday there had been clatter and the discordant clarity of Shoenberg. 

“Enjoy your run?” Will thrusts a glass of water at Hannibal and leans against the kitchen dresser. Hannibal takes a sip and sets the rest down. Heads off to the laundry to fetch the washing basket. Will follows, biting his lip and pushing at his glasses, in shorts and Hannibal’s red sweater. 

As if he had no warm clothing of his own.  
And, if and when the sweater is returned, it will be all but ruined.

“Look,” Will says, muffled, over his shoulder, Hannibal guesses, because he will now be turning again to the sink to fill bowls for the dogs, who have arrived back from following Hannibal into the woods. They will trek in mould and mud, while Will slops water all over the floor. “I shouldn’t have told you that you’re a controlling asshole.”

Hannibal walks upstairs. 

When he gets out of the shower, Will is sitting on the chair in the corner. Perched on the pile of neatly folded clothes that Hannibal was about to dress in, of course. 

Biting his lip. Pushing at his glasses.

Hannibal wants to kiss where Will’s teeth punish; he wants to lick there, where the skin is bruising, but he also wants to crack Will’s head open on the towel warmer. 

“I don’t mean that you a controlling asshole and that I shouldn’t have let on.” Will frowns. “I mean, I know you were trying to be supportive. I just have a formula, it’s healthy and affordable, so I’ve stuck to it. For years.” 

Hannibal goes into the bedroom. Chooses a new stack of neatly folded clothes. 

Hannibal throws his soiled running kit into the basket. Picks up Will’s jeans from atop the blanket box and puts them into the basket too. Will’s sweat-soaked nightwear. Three of Will’s socks. 

“I’m not doing well, off the boat. Not yet. It’s overwhelming. Who said that? About a good sailor not being fit to live on land?” 

Hannibal stops dressing. Hannibal does not inform Will that it was Samuel Johnson. He is, for a moment, even more incensed. He sees Will. Feels and tastes him. Knows his moods and already makes allowances, caters to his interests, pre-empts any difficulties. He does not need to be told that Will is going through a period of adjustment. 

“Maybe we could look at making their diet more seasonal. Wouldn’t hurt to try.” Will kneels on their bed. He looks disarmingly contrite. “The bottom line is that I’m sorry I laughed at your…dog menu.” Hannibal narrows his eyes. Will begins taking off the sweater while he is working through his mitigations. “The problem was that it was…cute. You were...cute." Will screws up his face. Hannibal does not know what to do with his. "And that’s new. For us.”

Hannibal smells the flush to Will’s chest, the bloom of it rapid now, and Hannibal scents in it his own defeat, as if he was some immense yet netted creature who sees the harpoon glinting through the fog. Will is unconsciously inexorable, a slim, two-pronged leister, sharp with simplicity and complexity, spearing through depths that only he can show to be shallows. 

But Hannibal is Hannibal and cannot help but thrash on the gaff. “Your reluctance to accept change, even in respect of feeding domestic animals…”  
“…is the kind of flaw which kept us from this for too long,” Will interrupts, agreeably. Because he can. Both interrupt and be agreeable. Both love the holy crap out of Hannibal and be unable to resist annoying him. “Yeah. I know. Are you washing things right now? If so, you’d better take these too.” He takes off his shorts and lays them tidily in the laundry basket. 

Will stills, naked, kneeling, hands on thighs. 

“I may have got a little of that oil on them. That expensive oil you like so god-damn much. While you were out running. While I was…practising.” 

It is a challenge. Not to Hannibal’s power. Will is not asking him to cede anything. That isn’t going to work, not with them, not in the long term. 

Hannibal steps closer. To take in the faint, neutral perfume of the oil underlying the other, denser perfumes that wrap around them, like mist, like fog.

Hannibal steps closer, to see if Will is real. 

Hannibal can do what he wishes with the quite sincere, not quite serious, apology. He certainly may never offer his own, regarding far greater rudenesses. And Will may never murmur his own roll-call of regrets during the dreaming, drowning days which are to come. 

But it is the smallest scratch in the caulking which sinks the ship, the smallest breech in formation which, unresolved, founders the fleet. It is not the ocean they have to sail upon surely, not yet, although that voyage may come; it is the narrow straits of an everyday life. So Hannibal nods, and lets the water close in over them both, and kisses the triton on his wide blue bed.


End file.
